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Refugees Dying from Lack of Water in South Sudan

Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing fighting in Sudan are facing a full-blown humanitarian crisis, with people dying from a lack of water, adequate medical care, and shelter as they seek refuge in already-overcrowded camps in South Sudan. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Medical Team Leader Dr. Erna Rijnierse described the situation in Maban on June 14.

TRANSCRIPT: "We are here at the clinic at kilometer 18. People have moved here since yesterday. As you can see there is a lot of patients at the moment. There is also a measles vaccination campaign going on which increases even more the number of people.

"People are in a very bad state. They have been walking for seven hours yesterday withot any water or nothing. Shelters have not been done yet. Water is being provided by MSF at the moment, but a lot of people still drink water from shallow places. We see a lot of diarrheal diseases, both bloody and not-bloody diarrhea. The other thing we see is malnutrition. A lot of kids haven't had proper food because they have been on the road for almost a month, up to six weeks.

"We are facing challenges in every single direction. Everything is not easy here. We are trying to increase our capacity to see as much people as we can. We are doing health promotion to stop people from drinking the bad water. We're doing everything that we can."